Reasons for source code line length limits (was: Maintaining Maximum Line Length When Using Tabs Instead of Spaces?)

[Chris Angelico]

On Mon, Dec 8, 2014 at 3:44 PM, Ben Finney <ben+python at benfinney.id.au> wrote:
> But regardless of display technology, the biggest reason to stick to a
> limit like 80 or less is: reader technology. The ability for humans to
> comprehend long lines of text is poor, and there *is* a cognitive point
> beyond which it's not helpful to have longer lines.

This is true. However, the human eye tends to ignore leading
indentation to some degree, so in terms of the original question
(which referred to tabs vs spaces and how that interacts with the line
length limit), it's even less important to worry about exact character
counts.

Sure, a 500-character line is less readable than a 75-character line.
But how much difference is there between 79 and, say, 90? I'd say
there's more variation between different people than that.

ChrisA